This week saw Kevin Fish deliver the first course in the eagerly awaited GCMA Advanced Management Programme.
The inaugural course in the new GCMA Advanced Management Programme was held this week, with Kevin Fish delivering the Certificate in Food and Beverage Management.
Held across two days, the course was packed with valuable insights and practical knowledge aimed at elevating the food and beverage operations within golf clubs.
The delegates engaged in learning the critical advanced elements of F&B management, developing the skills necessary to lead their departments with excellence and map out strategic plans for long-term success.
Kevin, of Contemporary Club Leadership (CCL), appeared on the Golf Club Talk UK podcast to underline the importance of a well-run F&B operation.
“I’ve been a Golf Club Manager and I’ve seen literally thousands of clubs, and one of the things I see done incredibly badly, sometimes through no fault of the manager, is food and beverage,” he said.
“I didn’t come into this industry to be a specialist in food and beverage, but we’ve become a specialist and now from a macro level I’m able to spot how to help clubs put theirs right.”
CCL are indeed experts in this area and are now in the seventh year of running their highly regarded Clubhouse Management Training Programme. That is the level of insight Kevin and CCL bring to the table, with the Food and Beverage Management Certificate helping managers gain a clear understanding of their F&B operation and how to devise a strategic plan to optimise it.
“It’s a perennial political football,” said Kevin. “It gets kicked around and it changes from committee to committee, and that’s because you don’t have an agreed plan.
“You will go home after the two days on this programme having spent time in the company of two specialists who have been doing this for a very, very long time and you might take back to your club the first plan for food and beverage the club’s ever had.”
Kevin and CCL will also bring their expertise to the fore in the Golf Club Governance Certificate, which is being delivered in January and is open for booking now.
With 25 years of experience to call upon, Kevin has seen “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of golf club governance and he is here to make sure you know the difference.
Speaking on the Golf Club Talk UK podcast, he said: “The biggest part of what we do is governance and strategic planning,” he said, with CCL also overseeing the Strategic Planning Certificate in this Award. “We work with clubs to get down into the nitty gritty, because there just isn’t a cookie-cutter solution to these problems.
“What we’ve done with these programmes is say, ‘Okay, you’re going to get that very close contact. It’s very small groups, very in-depth. We’ll take it nice and slow and figure out what the problems are at your club, and make sure you leave with the governance principles in your pocket and a fully a step-by-step plan on how to put a strategic plan into place’.”
With governance being such a prominent concern for practically all organisations, Kevin recognises the ongoing importance of education and equipping Golf Club Managers with the knowledge and skills they need to confidently address any issues arising.
“The reason it’s so difficult is governance is messy, because governance is people, and people are messy,” he said. “So you’ve got to try and master two different things — you’ve got to try and master all the structures and the scaffolding that you can put in place to stop the governance from wobbling; and then you’ve got to leverage the governance you’ve got, because the people are what’s going to make the difference.
“I could give you a perfect governance structure, and if the people are idiots, you’re in trouble. Equally, if you’ve got really good people with a good bandwidth, they’ll make the governance work.”
